Woodrow Leung, Photographer  ---  7621 N Longview Drive; Glendale, WI 53209-1837 ---- email: wleung@wi.rr.com Phone: 414-540-1203

 

Document Status: incomplete, unfinished!

Frequently Asked Questions and Commentary on Typical Photographic Issues (mostly in more detail than you may want or need!)

Definition of terms used in the price sheet.

Proof Sheet
Proof sheets, in the context of photographic film, used to be contact prints, or prints of the negatives or slides in a 1.0 x magnification. In the digital context, the proof sheets we create have image widths ranging from 2.6" width up to about 5" width, depending on how many images are printed on a single sheet of paper. The proof sheet provides the user with an economical way to have, review and compare multiple images. Depending on the customer requirements, proof sheets may consist of either uncorrected images, or images in which basic exposure, contrast and color adjustments have been made. When a user needs to review dozens or even hundreds or thousands of images, we can supply a proof set on CD or DVD along with the Picasa2 photo program from Google.
 
Commercial prints
A properly exposed image with both good shadow and good highlight detail is often difficult to capture during the changing light of live stage performances. A commercial quality print will be corrected so that (1) there is an appropriate range of tones from dark to light; (2) there is detail, where possible and appropriate, in both the light areas and the dark areas and (3) the color balance has been adjusted appropriately. What is 'appropriate' color balance, unfortunately, usually is a matter of individual taste and judgment; if the stage lighting is 'white', acceptable color balance is usually easy to achieve. If the stage lighting is all blue to give the feeling of moonlight but the dancer/actor is wearing a costume with many colors, do you (1) make a print that is all shades of blue because that was the stage lighting and what the viewer actually saw, or do you (2) 'warm' up the image a little so that you can see some suggestion of the colors of the costume but still show the blueness of the light, or (3) do you remove the excessive blueness of the light so that skin tones and the colors of the costume are conveyed with greater accuracy, but the emotional effect of the blue light is eliminated? Unfortunately, many stage lightings can be even more complicated with, for example, blue light from one side and red light from the other side. What to do? Sometimes one shows both colors, sometimes one goes to black and white!
 
Custom or Exhibition prints
The custom or exhibition print builds on the technical adequacy of the commercial print but also creates an image that graphically and emotionally supports the content of the image and the vision of the photographer. Often, there are areas in the image that distract from the main subject; the printer must find an appropriate photographic technique to minimize the distraction, typically by making the distraction lighter, darker, decreasing or increasing the contrast, blurring areas, or changing the color saturation or hues. The range of possibilities is wide; the difficultly comes in using the various techniques effectively in a subtle and tasteful fashion.

Photographic Equipment

What kind of cameras do you use?
Currently I use SLR or single lens reflex cameras almost exclusively; this camera system was originally a 35mm film system and has evolved to include digital cameras. In addition, I have a strong preference for 35mm rangefinder cameras for 'people' pictures..

Each have their strengths and weaknesses: SLR accommodate a greater range of lens and allow the user to compose the image more carefully; rangefinders, especially cameras like the Leica rangefinders, will focus normal and wide angle more accurately than SLRs at typical distances, and, at those distances, allow the photographer to more easily see and capture subtle changes in people's expressions. Rangefinders allow the photographer to see the moment of exposure and also outside of the area being photographed; SLRs show only the area photographed and a more accurate relationship of objects in the frame, but does not allow the photographer to see the exact moment of the photograph. There are other cameras, other sizes, that also have valuable attributes, but which I do not use frequently. For dance photography, I currently only use the (35mm equivalent) digital SLR..
What lens do you use? For Dance photography?
Like most photographers, I frequently use lens running the gamut of moderate wide angle lens to moderate telephotos; in the 35mm format, they have focal lengths between 35mm to 200mm.

With careful persistence, I can make use of wide angles out to 28mm or 24mm. Once in a blue moon, I get as wide as 16mm or as long as 300mm. For dance photography, one can almost always use the telephoto lengths, but the extreme wide angles are seldom useful, except for exotic effects.

The choice of lens for dance depends upon (1) your distance from the dancer; (2) how much of the stage you want to show in the photograph; (3) and of course, what lens do you have to use. Generally speaking, you (and the camera) need to be far enough away so that the dancer's body is portrayed in a relatively natural, neutral perspective (that is, the distance from any part of the body of the dancer to the camera is approximately equal). For performances that occur on a stage, I prefer (1) a center location (2) with enough height so that one can see the stage floor; (3) and far enough from the stage so that I can cover the full stage with the wider angle end of a zoom lens and a dancing couple with the telephoto end. This typically is the 70mm - 200 mm zoom lens, a moderate telephoto zooom lens.. In some situations, I have needed a (normal) 50mm lens for the full stage in addition to the 70-200. Some photographers, either commerical photographers or parents, may only be interested in single dancers; in those situations, a shorter lens and/or a closer working distance may be used. An additional factor in the choice of the lens is how much space in the photograph you want to have around a dancer. For maximum photographic quality one should eliminate any unnecessary space in the photograph; but as long as one is not creating a magazine cover, I feel that a dancer needs space to dance in, thus, cropping too tightly removes the relationships to other dancers and the set, and the viewer is deprived of the visual clues that show the how far, how high - the physicality of dance.

The adventurous dance photographer may want to try working both closer than normal with wider angle lens focusing on the near/far relationship between dancers, or using a long lens to focus in on some essential element, e.g. the physical connection between partners.
Film or Digital?
I used film exclusively for many decades and still value the beauty of the finely crafted black and white print (silver emulsion on paper); I even miss the pointillism from the grain of Tri-X. Starting in 2005, it became practical for me to convert to digital, almost exclusively. Digital was reasonably economical for me because (1) good quality digital SLR became somewhat affordable, (2) all my 'film' SLR lens were useable on the new digital cameras, (3) I already had microcomputers of sufficent power and (4) ink jet printers with adequate photographic quality also became available and affordable. The downside of going digital is that almost all the equipment, including cameras, are computers, and thus, become obsolete in a 5 to 7 years. Even if the hardware, whether camera, computer or printer is still functionally adequate for the user, it will be still be obsolete because, as a computer, it will be replaced by a cheaper, more powerful machine and the manufacture will be unlikely to supply parts for it after 7 years. The most important consequence of this continuing technological evolution is whether digital images will be accessible and useable after the technology becomes obsolete.

The benefits of digital are (1) almost immediate feedback in the photographic process; (2) no film and processing costs (3) potentially faster work cycle from taking the image to delivery of a printed image; (4) a smoothness in the tonality (e.g. of the sky) or the absence of (film) grain; (5) the ease in manipulating the printed image.

Disadvantages of digital include (1) ease in manipulating the printed image; (2) the impossibility to view the digital image without some kind of computing device (whereas one can view a slide or negative with a simple magnifying glass); (3) If a image that requires more resolution than the digital photographic system can deliver, the resulting digitial print yields a smooth tonality in those areas, whereas the traditional analog film system will degrade 'gracefully' into an image with lower contrast; (4) significantly higher capital costs than film system; (5) higher recurring capital costs than film system; (6) ease in producing identical prints.

Dance Photography - Technical and aesthetic issues

Ballet photography vs. Dance Photgraphy vs. ...?
While I am happy to capture the beautiful, elegant, classic ballet attitudes as they occur, and certainly try to improve my ability to capture different steps well, I do not consider myself primarily a 'ballet photographer' even though that is mostly what I have been doing. ... Unfinished!